This paper describes a software system which integrates modelling facilities with real-rime control functions to facilitate the development of flexible manufacturing cells (FMC) through design, planning, scheduling and control to implementation. This integration achieves better association between the various stages of system development. achieves data integrity and avoids the duplication of development effort. This FMC development tool also addresses the problem of control software generation. In the design of the software system two major ideas are incorporated namely object oriented programming and message driven control. These two ideas will be discussed in detail.

This paper describes a software system which integrates modelling facilities with real-rime control functions to facilitate the development of flexible manufacturing cells (FMC) through design, planning, scheduling and control to implementation. This integration achieves better association between the various stages of system development. achieves data integrity and avoids the duplication of development effort. This FMC development tool also addresses the problem of control software generation. In the design of the software system two major ideas are incorporated namely object oriented programming and message driven control. These two ideas will be discussed in detail.